Show Me How It's Done
by Cranberriez
Summary: Our gorgeous Dominic Howard is an art teacher at a secondary school.


Dom closed his eyes and pushed his thumb and forefinger into the sockets, nudging his glasses up on to his forehead. Then he blinked blearily and stared up at the clock for a few seconds before actually taking in the time.

8:47.

The kids would be coming in at any moment. Dom's eyes scanned over the classroom, checking that all the seats were tucked under the desks, that he hadn't left any bits of paper lying around, and that everything was as it should be. He'd decided to lay the tables out in a semi-circle kind of shape, as he thought it would enable him to see everything that was going on, including under the desk surface where mobile phones lurk in students' laps. It also made him feel a little less formal, and much more comfortable with the fact that soon, the whole room would be filled with 30-odd teenagers that he'd have to control.

The bell sounded. Harsh and deafening, the noise rang through the school site. In the distance he could hear footsteps, chatter, and the sound of doors being slammed open. The building was once again being filled by hundreds of bodies after a long summer break, and the contrast between the silence that Dom had known just ten minutes before and the crescendo of noise now filling the halls was immense.

Dom sighed, and adjusted his glasses slightly, before taking them off. He spun them around between his fingers. The children heading for his classroom were probably on the first staircase by now, with only one more to go. Dom glanced out of the window, but squinted uncomfortably and had to put his glasses back on before the emptying courtyard two floors below came into focus. There weren't many children left outside now, and Dom's hands were beginning to sweat.

All sorts of thoughts began to race through his minds. Doubts and regrets about applying for this job mingled with butterflies of excitement ricocheting around inside him. He wondered what his class would be like. Would they hate him? Would they complain about how strict he was, or how weird he looked? He knew kids could be cruel; he'd been subject to that fact when he'd been a teenager. But since he'd left school and gone to university to study art as well as complete a PGCE, he hadn't come into close contact with children of a secondary school age at all. He was nervous, yes, but curiosity also lurked in his worrying mind.

He was leaning back in his comfortable, spinny desk chair when the first shadow of a school uniform passed by the window in the door of his classroom. He jumped a mile, almost losing his balance and falling backwards, but he eventually regained his composure and dignity when he realised that the shadowed pupil wasn't part of his class. But now, the floodgates had opened, and behind the foggy, translucent glass he could see many duplicates of the shadow walking briskly by, some tall, some short, some large, some small, but all wearing the dark green, white and black uniform that Dom personally found repulsive.

His glasses were once again spinning between his fingers as the noise- and the tension- mounted. Why were there so many children in the corridor but not one in his classroom? Had he gone to the wrong room? Had he forgotten to put the sign up on the door? The metal frame slipped from his hand and clattered on to the desk. Dom's glasses had not fallen a long way but he swooped down upon them and rammed them onto his face, scolding himself for being so clumsy.

He sat in the teacher's chair, trying to remain calm and blasé about the whole situation, but after another ten seconds he was craning his neck from side to side, trying to spot potential members of his tutor group through the misty window in the door.

He sighed again, and placed his glasses on the desk very precisely, folding the arms in towards the lenses with absolute precision. It was then that the door opened.

"Oh my god."

Dom's head snapped up at the voice, but the door was swiftly being shut and he didn't have time to see who had spoken. It had been a young female, but as he didn't yet know any of his students there was no way that he could put a face to the voice.

He quickly got up and put his glasses on upside-down. He then corrected his mistake, blushing slightly, and strode over to the door. He turned the handle purposefully and hesitated for a split second before pulling it towards him.

"O-okay, so…" He said, rather more quietly than he'd intended. The sight was terrifying; a mass of emerald green with hints of gold here and there outlining the lapels of the blazers. "U-um, do you want to-" No one seemed to be listening to him, and Dom suspected that his blush was now intense enough to be visible from right down the other end of the corridor.

After a couple of seconds he gave up trying to get the whole corridor's attention and instead bent down slightly to address the girl in front of him.

"Um, could you go in now? Yeah?" He gave her a half-smile as she seemed to actually be listening to him.

"Okay…" She said, then collapsed into a fit of giggles and tugged on another girl's arm, almost falling through the open door into the classroom.

Dom was a little confused at the sudden giggle-fit, but eventually his action sparked off a chain reaction and the whole corridor was soon deserted, leaving him feeling slightly bewildered but satisfied. He tried to ignore the fact that his was the last class to have entered their classroom, and instead muttered, "come on, you can do this," under his breath. After pushing his glasses firmly up the bridge of his nose with a sweaty finger, he grasped the door handle and pulled it shut behind him with a _snap_ as he went inside.

The noise in the room immediately died down by about twenty percent, and Dom tried to look confident as he made his way up to his desk.

"Quieten down then, everyone…" He said once there, projecting his voice only a little as he wasn't very used to having to control a room full of chatty teenagers. But miraculously, it worked, and eventually the kids were all looking his way, their mouths shut and their bags on the floor. Dom took a deep breath. He remembered what the headmaster had said to him that morning.

"_Once you've got their attention for the first time, they'll be curious, not attentive. Tell them enough to keep them satisfied, and make sure you earn their respect, or you'll lose them within the first ten minutes."_

'And quite right too,' Dom thought. But then there was the problem of how on Earth to do it? He'd originally planned to think of a kind of script for the registration period, so he'd know exactly what he was doing. However, he'd kept putting it off and putting it off, not wanting to come up with anything lame or cheesy, so now he knew that he had to improvise, and get it spot on the first time. But as he stood there at the front of the classroom, hands planted firmly on the desk, staring out at the sea of spotty faces before him, he began to think that maybe this wasn't going to be as hard as he'd originally thought.

"Good morning, 10.2, and welcome to your first day of year 10. My name's Mr. Howard." He said, the words rolling easily off of his tongue.

He paused for a second, a smile flitting across his face as he suddenly remembered something absurd that his dad had said to him just before his first date. _"You've got it, son. Work it."_

Suddenly Dom knew _exactly_ what to say. "And before you ask, my first name is Dominic, I'm twenty four years old, I teach art, and yes, this _is_ my first teaching job, so please be nice."

He only just stopped himself from winking, but his smile was unwavering as he sank gracefully into the teacher's chair and pulled his laptop towards him.

"Right. Register."


End file.
